Work is different , not dead

Great article by Ross Gittelson in SMH dec 13 2017

Summary 

1953 - the great Russian Economist Wassily Leontief wrote “labour will become less and less important .... more and more workers will be replaced by machines

1960’s Lyndon a Johnson established a commission to investigate fears that automation was permanently reducing the amount of work available 

1978 - Monash University Helena symposium on the implications of new technologies - with the convened predicting that by 1988 at least a quarter of the Australian workforce would be made redundant by technological change. 

1980’s Barry Jones - (aus Lobour leader) in his book “Sleeper Wake” predicted that in the 1980’s new technologies will decimate the labour force in the goods producing sector of the economy

Over the past 100 years - technological change has decimated jobs - but had actually created jobs at a more rapid pace - improving the lifestyle and standard of living of the human!

What has been happening is that the nature of work has been changing - and this trend is likely to continue 

Routine cognitive jobs (shop assistants, brokers, drivers )and routine manual jobs (factory workers) will go - but not routine manual jobs  (nurses, waiters , security staff,  ) and non routine cognitive jobs will increase (engineers, management, healthcare, designers)

The nature of jobs  is going to change - but the number of jobs needed will probably increase ......

So ...... people will need to be able to adapt - and “learn how to learn”

What do you think?